A Day at Hong Kong Disneyland

Alex spent some time in China last month. He usually spends long hours working on these business trips, but this time he had one day all to himself. Since he was so close to Disneyland, I convinced him to go out and take pictures for me.

I'm just going to get right to the pictures. There is a cool train that takes you to the park. In true Disney fashion, they paid attention to the details.

There was a pretty cool water fountain at the entrance. 

The entrance is similar to the Disney parks in the US, right down to the crowds.

Now here is where Hong Kong Disneyland is totally different than every other Disney park. Lantau Peak can be seen behind the castle.

The buildings are smaller than the US versions of Disney Parks.

Tomorrowland has some unique qualities to it. And there is some construction going on. Alex was told that it was going to be a Marvel attraction.

Because he knew that I was going to be curious, Alex made a point to take pictures of the food.

You can see a crane where the construction is taking place.

Main Street facing the entrance of the park.

One of the rides that I was most eager to hear about was Mystic Manor. This is Hong Kong Disneyland's version of Haunted Mansion.  

Alex said that it was a fun ride, and unlike any other ride he has been on.

More theme park food.

And speaking of unique, Toy Story Land seems like a pretty cool area at Hong Kong Disneyland.

RC Race Car has a ride! Check out the que details below! 

Looks like a fun ride!

Toilets!

So many details!

And more food in Fantasyland. 

Sleeping Beauty Castle. It reminds me of the castle in Disneyland California. 

On his way out, Alex took a few shots of the parade. 

And he did some souvenir shopping for us!

We have such a long list of places to take the kids some day. I think the kids would love to visit that part of the world some day. If we could just get past the food thing.

Thank you, Alex!

And the home of the CHIEFS!

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic. Alex was in China, and we were knee deep in back to school, soccer, and work schedules. Alex finally came home last Thursday night. Yay! And we had the perfect welcome home gift. A wonderful family from our church wanted to give their Kansas City Chiefs tickets away to a special needs family. We were the lucky recipients! I can't tell you how much this meant to our family. And the timing couldn't have been better!

This was not the kids first Chiefs game. We took them to a game a few years ago, but it didn't go that well. The kids were very anxious, and we didn't stay long. Nik was afraid of sitting so high up, and Noah was terrified of the fireworks. But proving that we can conquer anything is one of our favorite past-times. So we were so excited to see how well the kids would do this time around.

We had great seats near the 50 yard line.

We sat back and watched as they did the pre-game announcements. The kids stood and put their hands over hearts during the anthem!

The anxiety never came. We were slapping high fives, munching on popcorn, cheering on the Chiefs like every other family in the stadium!

Fireworks? No problem! Yeah, I said no problem! No panicking, or running for the exit. They muffled their ears and just kept having fun! 

Look at those faces! I'm not here to say that our journey is easy. No one's journey is easy. But I would not want to be on this roller coaster with anyone else but the 3 guys in the picture above. I can't look at this picture and not be thankful. 

When we started this Autism journey over 10 years ago, I had so many fears. There were the obvious ones. Will they be able to have conversations with me? Will they be able to work? I also worried about their faith.  Would they have faith? Faith in themselves, and faith in our Heavenly Father. We're so blessed to be living in this city, where there are so many opportunities for our sons. One huge blessing is our church home, where my boys will be starting confirmation classes soon! A prayer answered! Yes they will have faith! They know that they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them! Like overcome a fear of fireworks.

Have a blessed day, friends!

Raising a Resilient Child with Autism

My worst nightmare happened. Our air conditioner broke down at the beginning of a heat wave. You don't know hell until you have lived in the Midwest during the summer without air. It all happened suddenly, of course. I left a very cool and comfortable home to go to work, and came home to what felt like a steam room. Of course, I was the only one who noticed the heat.  The next day, we got the bad news. Our 19 year old a/c system had a bad thing-a-ma-bob. I don't know what it was now. I'm sure I lost brain cells in the heat. Well, whatever it was, it was going to be expensive to fix. We finally came to the decision to replace both the a/c and heating system.

As we patiently waited for installation day, we tried to take refuge in our basement. I called it a camp out. Trying to make the best out of a challenging situation. I'm crazy like that.

We even brought down a tent!

After one night down there, it became apparent that we were going to die down there. Ok, I'm exaggerating, but it was hot, friends. How hot was it? Well it was so hot, I think the worms were using pot holders to pull worms out of the ground. It was so hot, the cows were giving evaporated milk. It was so hot, I was starting to sizzle and smell like bacon! Yeah, it was hot. We ended up checking in to an Embassy Suites for a couple of nights. What more could we want? A suite, an unlimited supply of snacks and drinks, a pool for the kids, free wi-fi, and oh yeah, AIR CONDITIONING! That's right. Livin' the dream, baby!

The suite life!

During these few days, the kids had to adapt quite a bit. When we tried to wait things out at home, we made them stay in the basement, where it was a bit cooler. We were all stuck down there together, agreeing to watch the same shows, not having much privacy or space. And we managed to do this and still love each other!

It's these times when I am glad that we did our best to raise resilient children. We always tried to push them out of their comfort zone. From crowded subways, to cross country flights, to walking in the heat across the Brooklyn Bridge (yeah, we did that.). 

While keeping the kids in the safe cocoon of our home surely would have made things easier in those early days of Autism, it would not have made the kids as strong as they are today. I'm thankful for the struggles. And thankful for a husband who puts up with my jokes and belly flab. It's all been worth it. Because for 5 long, hot days, we made the best of a challenging situation. And we did it with smiles. And sausage, of course!

Thank you, God, for the family that I have. And for air conditioning!

It's Hollywood, baby!

It's been years, and I mean years, since we have visited Universal Studios Hollywood. We always make it a point to visit Universal Orlando on every trip, but Universal Studios Hollywood is always overlooked by us. I guess when you grow up in a town all your life, you just take certain things for granted. On this trip back home, we decided to pay the park a visit.

It started out great. We arrived bright and early on a Sunday morning. We were probably just a few people back in line. I ordered our tickets on line a few days earlier, and was able to print them out from home. It was awesome. That is, until I tried to scan my ticket, only to be told that I had already used it. Uh, no I didn't! They made me get out of line, go stand over in the guest services line to try to get it sorted out. I sent my family in to the park and went to deal with this mess on my own. Fortunately for me, it just took a little explaining to get them to understand that I was on a plane the day before, and most definitely did not use my ticket!

With that all sorted out, I was sent to the front of the line and made my way in to the park.

The only way to handle a theme park when you have people living with Autism in your party, is to have a game plan. We do all that we can to avoid lines. So the first place we headed was Despicable Me Minion Mayhem. People were walking right on to the ride, so the line was not bad at all. As we approached the entrance, a very large group of foreign tourists started to push and shove to get past us. I would say it was about 50 people all together, all following a man holding up a white flag. They were extremely aggressive, and were just pushing people around to get past them and cut the line. It really scared Nik and that made my sister furious. We may be short, but we can push right back if we feel threatened, and my sister felt threatened. We all kind of locked arms so that we didn't get pushed, and kept our group together. I have never seen such level of aggressiveness in a theme park before. Yikes!

We finally got on the ride and really enjoyed it! 

After that, we made our way to the long escalators down to the bottom level of the park. Most of the rides are down there. First on our list was Transformers. It was awesome! After we got out of the ride, the kids got their picture taken. It was so cool, because there is actually someone inside, controlling the Transformer. Noah was trash talking, and the character trash talked right back to him. There was plenty of nerd banter going back and forth between the 2 of them!

After that, we headed over to The Mummy. Only Alex, Nik, Noah and my niece wanted to ride. The rest of us sat down and recovered from Transformers. From there, we moved on to Jurassic Park, then The Simpson's ride. It has it's only little Springfield area.

We decided to have lunch at Krusty Burger. It was actually pretty decent food, as far as theme park food goes.

After that, we headed over to the backlot tour. Boy has this changed over the years! 

We really enjoyed King Kong 4D 360. The tram goes through a tunnel and stops. We had to pop on some 3D glasses and the show started. You are surrounded, well 360 degrees surrounded by King Kong battling it out with dinosaurs. Awesome! 

Two of my favorite parts of the tour as a kid were the Jaws and Psycho scenes.

They now have a Norman Bates come out of the motel, wielding a knife and approaching the tram.

After the tour, we headed over to the new Despicable Me Funland area. We spotted Sideshow Bob on our way.

Funland had a few cute rides for kids, plus a big water play area. After that, we were all feeling pretty tired. Time to head home! But not before we bought some snacks for the ride back to grandma's house.

All in all, it was a fun time. And by coming to the park with a touring plan in mind, we really had very little wait for rides. 

Inside Out and Autism.

Fear and Joy

One kid is afraid of heights, and the other isn't.

Emotions are a challenge for kids on the spectrum. In fact, not being able to express how they feel was the number one reason why my kids would have a melt down back in their younger days. When the kids were little, we used The Unthinkables to help them get in touch with their emotions. To this day, this still hangs on my refrigerator. I'm thankful to the Elementary school teacher that sent this home with the kids. 

Sometimes I still have to remind Noah not to have "Rockbrain" when he gets stuck on things that upset him. Of course, this causes him to be very annoyed. It was effective, but there were still some feelings that proved to be more difficult to talk about.

That's where Inside Out comes in. The kids and I saw it on Friday, and I loved it so much. Inside Out is about a little girl named Riley, who is struggling to cope with a cross country move. The main characters are her emotions; Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust all battle to come to terms with their feelings as Riley's world is turned upside down. Joy tries to lead the way, but Sadness quickly takes over during the life-changing event in Riley's life. It reminded me so much of Noah and what he must have been feeling when we moved. I admit, I cried in the movie. I cried twice. I looked over at Nik, who I could tell was fighting back tears at a couple parts. Noah, on the other hand, was bursting with excitement. He was loving the emotions. I think the movie really spoke to him.

On our way home, I thought it would be a perfect time to talk about the movie. Noah was quick to say that Joy was his favorite. Nik said his favorite was Anger. We talked about how we have feelings just like in the movie. Noah brought up Robin Williams and how sad he was that he was dead. He felt Sadness. Sadness. Like in the movie. We talked about getting frustrated just like Anger. Feeling Joy that we were spending time together. In that car, we were quickly able to connect the dots between our emotions and that of the movie characters.

I love these moments. When something clicks in my kids head, and they can totally relate to something. Life is good, my friends. I think this movie with stick with my kids for a long time.